Withering Primrose
by Painted Dreamscape
Summary: The ground was cold and Allen couldn't remember where he was for a moment. His vision was blurry and memories swam before him. Strong arms. The calloused hands that were rough but gentle with me. A strong build. That fit mine like a glove. Long tresses. Darker than the nights we shared. Glares sent everywhere. Those deep cobalt orbs would drag me further into you.But...who are you?
1. Petunia: Resentment and Anger

Beta'd by the much appreciated King Rabbit.

The ground was cold and Allen couldn't remember where he was for a moment. His vision was blurry and memories swam before him. Strong arms. _The calloused hands that were rough but gentle with me._ A strong build. _That fit mine like a glove._ Long tresses. _Darker than the nights we shared._ Glares sent everywhere. _Those deep cobalt orbs would drag me further into you. _But the question was: _who are you?_

Allen tried to sit up, a wave of nausea crashing over his head, threatening to drown him. He fought it back and looked around. Scorch marks and craters littered the field, being quickly covered with snow. It was sickeningly deceitful, an unknown illusion. He couldn't remember anything about the battle that had taken place, but he tried to remember the last thing he did. He kept drawing blanks after getting his mission from Komui and being ambushed on the train. He didn't know where he was and how long he had been there, but he was freezing, weak, and hungry.

Standing, Allen looked into the dense forest that seemed to crowd around him. The situation was grim at least, but he started his trek in a timely manner, stumbling a few times. He had come to notice a wound at his side and ripped off his remaining sleeve to try to stifle the blood. The rest of his clothes weren't faring any better, unfortunately. Cursing under his breath, he started his journey once more.

…

Allen sank down on the ground, leaning his back against a tree. He had wandered for what felt like hours, and had finally encountered a town. It was small and homey, but he couldn't drag himself any farther. He closed his eyes and drifted to sleep, unaware of the eyes that watched him or the arms that carried him away.

Voices slowly made their way to Allen's fuzzy mind. It was like he was in a thick fog and the light was barely there, but he could see it. He started to struggle in his own mind. Sleep was clawing at him, but he wanted to stay awake. It unsettled him to be so vulnerable with strangers; what if he had been captured by the Noah?

"…found him…."

"…doing out in…..the wolves…but.."

The conversation was getting clearer and clearer to Allen's ears. He kept his eyes closed though; it wouldn't do for them to hush about their plans if they noticed him.

"Do you think he's one of them?" a young child's voice rang out with such bitterness Allen found it a bit startling.

"If he is, they'll be looking. Until we know for sure, keep him here. It'll do us good either way." It was an elderly woman, this time. The child's bitter tone paled in comparison to this woman's malice. What caused them so much hate, so much grief? And what did he have to do with it? Silence reigned for minutes and it was driving him up the wall. He started to flutter his eyelids and it was obvious someone noticed when hands held down his arms.

"Don't you dare think of moving." A little girl no older than eight sat on his chest. Wavy deep teal hair was held back in a low ponytail, with a few strands framing her sneering face, black orbs so very distrusting. It would have been cute if she hadn't been holding a wicked blade to his neck. It reminded him of something, no, _someone_. This thought was caught off by a blaring pain bashing about his skull. He choked off a howl, bucking up in agony. The child kept a calm face, but allowed some movement. His eyes watered and a longing filled his heart. Then, it was gone. As suddenly as it had started, it had ended in the same fashion. He glanced up at the wooden ceiling trying to catch his breath. The child was nonplussed.

"I would call that a very dramatic first attempt at escape, if it weren't for the pain that I recognize so much." She whispered.

"Who are you?" Allen gasped. The girl looked down at him and smirked. The expression annoyed him, almost dangerously so, but it felt so familiar. 'What am I forgetting?' he wondered.

"I am Yukari. And you are my prisoner. Bitch, preferably." She stated casually, flicking him in the forehead. Allen's face turned fifty shades of red. He was certainly no one's bitch!

"Excuse you, Miss Smurf-

"How _dare _you!"

"-but I am not your bitch. If anything you would be my smurvent." Allen bit back. He lifted his hand and flicked Yukari's nose. She scowled and punched his left arm. It was adorable how it didn't hurt.

"You need to mind your manner, else this pimp will educate you!" she growled. Allen chuckled.

"Haven't you been taught to respect your elders? I'm sorry, that ridiculously impossible for a beast with a brain of your caliber. All you can learn are atrocities, sadly. It seems they take up less space, lord only knows why." Allen sighed nonchalantly and Yukari howled in rage. Allen frowned as she raised her hand to strike him, a scowl on her face, but then the door had been opened and Yukari snapped into a stiff, straight position. They both looked over and saw an elderly woman hunched over a piece of what looked like rotting driftwood. Allen quickly realized it was a cane. Torn rags hung on her skeletal frame, along with her saggy skin. She looked like she could barely lift her own weight, but when she spoke her voice dripped with such authority, such power, that Allen would have thought the little shack was haunted if he didn't see her lips move.

"Child, I thought I had raised you better. Get off of that thing and go do some work. It seems you can't even guard over a sleeping trap without doing something wrong." Her eyes blazed with a cold fury and her words sunk their bitter fangs into the shocked girl.

"But Grandmother-"

"Go." a thin, crooked finger pointed out the door to who knows what. Allen couldn't see that far outside, but it seemed Yukari had gotten the message. With slumped shoulders, she clambered off and briskly walked outside, the older woman shutting the door behind her. She quickly set her gaze back to Allen.

"It seems you've awoken, have you? Well, no matter. You pose no threat with those binds-" Allen glanced at the paper seals on him and around the walls that he somehow hadn't noticed before, "so I will begin now. What purpose does your kind hope to achieve here? Answer wisely, or you may not have your legs for much longer, not that that would stop you in your true form, but like this, you have _no power_."

Allen's thoughts swirled around him, panic seeping in. What in the world was going on here? His kind? Losing his _legs_? True form? Did she take him for some kind of monster?

"Ma'am, I'm quite sure you have me confused with something else-"

"Your silver tongue will not work with me, beast." She calmly interjected. If he thought her eyes were cold before, they were tundra's now . She slammed down the cane, a slight echo following the initial beat. "If you think those innocent eyes will work, you have much to learn; I am not to be fooled so easily. I'd kill you if it wouldn't harm our chances. _Now tell me why you have come_."

Allen was even more confused than before, if that was even possible. His life was on the line for some false truth this woman thought he held. Whatever mongrels had been tormenting them, he wondered, must have been very cruel.

"Ma'am, I truly have no idea what has you and your grandchild so weary-" her eyes narrowed," but I, for a fact, have nothing to do with it. I'm not even sure where I am! You probably found me with my wounds open, and wouldn't that prove enough that I am not some monster? I am very human." Allen whispered. His throat was hoarse and it hurt to talk much louder than that. She studied him like some trash that she had stepped on with her best pair of shoes.

Snorting, she came closer to the bed, and raised her hands, interlocking them. She pulled back her fingers until her knuckles made little, wrinkly mountains and her index fingers stood straight, touching, and her thumbs stuck on top of the gap left over on the side of her palms. Muttering in a language that was said too quickly for him to recognize, the seals shone with a purple glow and chains burst form from every one, coiling around his body like angry snakes. They stopped only until every limb was held in a crushing embrace and the woman looked at them coolly.

"I see that you do not like to give up your façade so easily. In that case, we will force you to speak. You will not eat, you will not sleep, you will not so much as think without _pain_ until you're ready to confess the plot upon which you have taken. My village will suffer no more!" she uttered. Turning on her heel, her cane made a clanking noise against the floor as she opened the door and left.

Allen started to sigh, but jolted when he felt an electric shock run through his body. He knew it was only a signal of what was to come.

_What have I gotten myself into?_


	2. Cactus: Endurance

_Hi, I'm Paint and the author of this fanfiction. Thank you for deciding to read this piece, but I would like you all to know something before we can continue any further. This is not a story where Allen becomes a pedophile or a heterosexual. Please take a note of this. If you are uncomfortable with even the slightest notions of homosexuality, this is not the story for you and for those of us that have interpreted that as "HEY GUYS I'M GOING TO WRITE A SUPER SMUTTY LEMON SCENE THAT MAKES YOU STAIN YOUR UNDERWEAR! :D" you are wrong as well. Have fun reading and I'll warn you if a chapter has strong sexual implications. Chao~ _

_Beta'd by King Rabbit, a fun new friend. _

Allen started getting very familiar with how many wooden boards made up the ceiling, how many chips board 32A had in the southern, top right hand corner had, and that a warp on board 59 looked like a deformed flower. He stopped analyzing, though, because he found he would like to keep the little sanity he had left, as little use as it was in this place. Allen would shake his head, but he was afraid to move.

The shocks came suddenly and powerfully, rendering Allen incapable of even breathing as spasms racked his body. It was almost as if the chains were bipolar; the slightest, most inoffensive action would get him a blasted convulsion and then something like violent thrashing with the rare bout of adrenaline would get nothing. The sole occupation of those restraints was to keep him in pure agony and he dearly wished they weren't such professionals.

Wincing, he tried to breathe a little deeper than his usual light sniffs, calming his maddening mind. Predictably, the chains were having none of it and squeezed his chest tighter, and he heard his ribs crack under the pressure. They had been more violent with him lately, probably showing the frustration of the aura of who powered them. Damn old crone. He choked on a groan and wheezed out some sort of grunt. At this point, he would gladly be back outside in the dark, cold woods than be suffering through this much longer. He knew with a cool certainty that he would die here in this poorly constructed shack if not given reprieve. A snapping sound and he knew his ribs had been broken when the chains pressed in tighter on him. Gasping in silent torment, he felt a poke near his lungs and figured it was a splintered rib. Well _fuck_ his life. Taking in shallower pants, blood trickled out of his mouth, and he grinned. That old hag must be desperate for information he didn't have.

Speaking of the devil; the door creaked open, with snow and icy wind drifting in for a second, and then just as quickly shut out by what had brought them in. The old woman was back, a scowl on her face, from the lack of progression with the boy - no_,_ _thing_, she had to remind herself. It just looked so real, so human. But she couldn't afford to be swept up in its smoke and mirrors. Not again, never again.

She tapped her cane against the frozen floor and the chains let up a bit. Allen turned to gaze at her, his eyes dead, giving away not even the pain she was sure he felt. She gritted her teeth and glared back at him with the frostiest, most merciless glower she could summon from the trenches of her soul.

"Speak, creature. Things can only get worse for you from here." Her voice was oddly neutral. Allen gazed at her and opened his mouth, trying to speak, but he started to cough violently, specks of red sailing through the air onto the sheets and floor.

Narrowing her eyes, she limped over to the bed and placed her finger over a nail jutting out from one of the posts. It was rather odd, in Allen's opinion, because it was bent so that it hooked through the wood and one could touch both ends of the rusty nail. Pricking her finger, a tiny red dot bloomed upon her pale skin, making it ghostly in contrast with its vibrancy. Allen wondered if this woman really had lost her mind, or if she'd even had it to begin with. What good would a wounded finger do, especially since it would probably become infected from the rust? Allen never did like self-harm, not that he could say much about it.

She pressed her finger to his forehead, and the moment the blood touched his scar, his skin burned. It felt like she held the temperature of the damned sun in that one little finger. Sadly, the unpleasant sensations did not stop there.

His legs were the first to feel torn and punctured by thousands of knives seemingly laden with a poison that melted his tissue on contact, like acid splashed against his flesh. He held his eyes closed and released brutal, guttural screams that shook his mind and seared his throat. His chest constricted and his heart beat so hard his blood couldn't circulate fast enough and his hand were going dreadfully numb and it was all _horrible_. It was made completely unbearable to the malicious, mirth-filled crowing made by the devil's grandmother herself.

"Why are you doing this to me, what have I done?! What power is this?" he screeched at her, opening his eyes to see her bemused expression. Glancing at him with her finger still on his scar, she gave him a calculating look.

"Did you even realize you are no longer chained, creature? That these pains you feel, the cries of the actions being done to you, is all in your head? Look down at yourself, there is nothing missing besides the sanity and peace you so desperately crave." She commented serenely.

He shook his head wildly. How could they be in his mind, when it felt so real? How could the feeling of his tender, inner muscles being exposed to the frigid air, with his ligaments being stripped from his very bones? He heard her guffawing grow louder and knew that in her mind, his own torture was better than any she could throw at him. After all, who knew what terrified him most, what made his heart ache and bleed more than he himself? No one.

Forcing his eyes open, he glanced down at himself, prepared to see the loss of limbs, vermillion everywhere, and die from his life being sucked away into the atmosphere. What he saw made him want to cry and send his fist into the wall. His limbs were intact, the sheets were the off-white they'd always been, and he'd just confirmed he was a raving lunatic in a fight with himself. The pain had somehow subsided into a dull throb, almost as if his conscious finding out that he was hurting himself made him…well, it made him stop hurting himself. He'd snapped back to attention when he felt the absence of this warmth on his scar. Looking up, she had composed herself again and was staring at him like a piece of meat, sizing him up. Probably to see how many other witches he could serve with just his leg. Not many, he thought, since he hadn't eaten since the train ride when he was ambushed.

"Since you haven't seemingly closer to spitting out your plans, especially with that amazingly hilarious mental block of yours, you might as well do some work for us and suffer. Don't even think of shifting, I've got you blood bond now, creature. And I will never reveal how it works. I know how sly you monsters can be. You start early in the morning, well before sunrise tomorrow. If you do your work without complaint, you _will_ do it well, I will make sure of that don't you worry, and then maybe you could get leftover slop to fill your belly. I will never give you anymore of…_them._" She pronounced that word as if it was the queen of all sins and for all Allen knew it might as well have been. Before he could protest or move, she made a swift sign with her hand and he blinked out like a light. At least he was blessed with dreams of a handsome stranger with smoldering cobalt eyes that night.

…

He woke up to tiny hands roughly shaking him awake. Groaning, he tried to bat away the little buggers, but they came back with an annoying persistence. Blinking his eyes open, he saw Yukari, the little girl he had first met. Needless to say, that was an unforgettable encounter. She was staring at him in such a way that he might as well have been a dead frog on a lab table and her with a scalpel in hand. Sitting up, he held himself gingerly, waiting for his damaged innards to protest. He knew his ribs cracking and breaking was no figment of his loony brain. When it didn't come, he looked bewildered at Yukari before opening the shirt and seeing his bandaged chest.

"A wounded worker is a useless worker." Yukari's voice startled him and when he glanced up at her, she shrugged. "That's what Grandmother said, anyway. Now don't sit there all day. Get up and follow me outside. Come on, _move it._" She scolded.

It seemed Allen had been housed in a storage shed, because a bigger home stood erect a few yards away, and a barn a bit closer. The town, he saw, was down the hill from where the stone path started at the main house entrance. They had no neighbors, unless the snoozing squirrels in the trees counted. It was dark, but not enough to where he couldn't see Yukari waving him to hurry from the open barn door. As he jogged over, she held out a shovel to him.

"Since its winter, we keep the cows inside at all times. There are three major pens inside and you'll start by cleaning them out, got it? Stressed cows don't make good milk and I swear, if it comes out bad, I'll skin and tan your hide." She said with conviction.

As the sound of the door closing behind them became background noise, and Yukari started lighting lamps, he quickly noted the outer size of the barn was very deceiving. It looked as if it could hold no more than twenty of these passive beasts, but there must have been at least twice as many crammed inside. He stepped into the closest pen and the stench that bulldozed his nose almost made him wretch. For once, he was glad he hadn't eaten in a while. Shifting his shirt so the collar pulled over his abused nostrils, he started shoveling feces into the red wheelbarrow Yukari had rolled up and quickly abandoned. He supposed not even she could stand the noxious odor. Looking at the pile again, he grimaced.

Great. Bessie liked big lunches like him. _Fantastic_.


End file.
